244 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



at the lasti named price is now not to be liad mucih under £300, 

 HigL, even very high, prices were occasionally given in the^ 

 shires nearly a hundred years ago, but in the cases which have 

 been handed down — in the Sporting Magazine, in the Druids' 

 works, and elsewhere — the big money was almost invariably- 

 paid for a celebrity who had already distinguished himself in 

 the hunting fields of the Midlands. Now hundreds are asked, 

 and paid, for young horses of no experience, which are sold 

 chiefly on their good looks and quality, and in some cases 

 because they have won a first or secured a minor prize in a class 

 for four- or five-year-olds at a fairly important horse show. 

 And as the speed of hounds has been increased the pace of 

 horsies is more important than it once was, and this is the chief 

 reason for the rise. 



What I have just written raises up a big question, and I am 

 not absolutely sure that high-class hounds go faster on a good 

 scent in a grass country than they did, say, two generations 

 ago. What I do feel sure about is that the average so-called 

 provincial pack has, thanks to the care taken in breeding and 

 the free use of blood from the best kennels, improved its pace 

 in no small degree. There are, it need hardly be said, days on 

 which hounds can hardly walk after a fox, but there are others 

 on which it is difficult for even thoroughbred horses to live 

 with them, and I am much inclined to think that in recent 

 years I have seen hounds beat horses more frequently than 

 they did years ago. Indeed I feel quite certain that, from 

 an all-round point of view, the pace of hounds has increased, 

 and horse-dealers, having long since recognised the fact, have 

 for some years been supplying an animal with more breeding 

 and quality, and far higher on the leg than the hunters which 

 did duty for the fathers and grandfathers of the present hunt^ 

 ing generation. And I may add that the demand for these 

 speedy, and therefore more valuable hunters, is by no means 

 confined to the shires, or other grass countries, but to be found 

 in all the more important provincial hunts. I remember one 

 of thei biggest dealers in the higheist class of hunters telling me, 

 some half-dozen years ago, that his best customers came from 

 all parts of the kingdom, and he mentioned two hunts which, 

 in his opinion, could show the best collection of horses, neither 



